If your answer is no, please check the resources I linked to above. If your answer is yes I would like to take you to the next level. Getting the most out of your Online-Marketing Team.

Introducing DISC

DISC is a model that illustrates how people have natural tendencies and motivations depending on their personality type. Some people are motivated by money or recognition and others by well-being. While certain individuals like direct communication, others prefer gentle talks. Getting to know your employees improves Mutual Communication leading to an more enjoyable work environment and increased productivity. Would you travel to Peru and expect to communicate clearly with the locals in English? Of course not, because English isn’t their language. Clearly your would achieve better communication in Spanish. The same logic applies to communication with your work force, you must speak their language.

Being aware of the different personalities in your company gives you the power to adapt your message to the recipient. Clear, effective messages improve relationships, increase productivity, and result in successful business. The DISC model is both popular and proven, making it easy to find onlineresources about it. Over the years I have studied the DISC model thoroughly. Having implemented it in my own business I have observed it at work. The DISC model explained in this article is based upon my personal findings and experiences. I would like to keep the explanations short. Basically DISC analyses a person's behavior and personality based on four segments: Dominant, Influence, Steady (or Supportive) & Cautious. The analysis asks the following questions.

a) Are they assertive or reserved? b) Are they task or people focused?

Some people have a very balanced profile, others have a high characteristic in just one or two segments. A person classified as being an Influencer for example is referred to as "High I" , this is how his profile would look like compared to a balanced profile:

a balanced profile: a profile from a "High I"

Discovering your team members natural behavioural tendencies can be found in two ways. You can have them fill out a questionnaire and purchase the analysis. Or you can simply observe and analyse their behaviour yourself. In my opinion the latter is good enough.

For example, a dominant person is assertive and task focused, while an Influencer is assertive and people focused. Dominant individuals ("High D") love to take responsibility, solve problems, and are often managers or business owners. Influencers love networking, to solve a problem, their first step is to think of a person that might be able to help them. "High I's" are often found in politics, journalism, or consulting. The Supportive person ("High S") enjoys a comfortable atmosphere. They love working for foundations, helping others, and contributing to the greater good. The cautious ("High C") thrives in an atmosphere of control over the situation where through logic they are able to solve problems (they typically enjoy jobs such as engineering, accounting, or medicine).

Three tips to get the best out of your team:

1) Get effective with the composition of the team

If you ask an experienced manager, how they get great results they will tell you the key to great results is their team. And that's the truth, but that’s not all. Having the best engineers in the world doing Marketing won’t get you the results you're looking for.

A productive work force is typically comprised of a mix of High D's, High I's, High S's and high C's.

So analyse the tasks of your team and adjust accordingly. A team of High D's will result in leadership but nobody will want to do the actual work. If you just have just High I's you will lack in planning and controlling. A team of High S's and you will have invest too much time to details and fail to produce results. If your workforce is all High C's your team like won't adapt quickly to change and therefore fall behind the competition.

When choosing your team, don't make the common mistake of selecting individuals like yourself! Utilize the DISC model. Recruit High I's for the Social Media and Link-building. Web Developers and Onsite-SEO positions should be filled by High C’s. For the positions of Usability Manager and Graphic Designer look for a High S. High D’s should be placed working as a Conversion Optimist or Project Manager. Creating a mixed team and aligning personality types to job positions will improve productivity, efficiency, and overall job satisfaction.

2) Motivating your team with DISC

Would you give your 10 yr old niece a gift card to Starbucks for good grades? Of course you wouldn’t, and you wouldn’t try and motivate a High C with a gift card to the GAP. A more appropriate incentive would be to send them to a life-hacker convention for example. Different personality types are motivated in different ways, so make sure your incentives are appropriate.

To make things easy on you I included a small Cheat Sheet for DISC:

When giving positive feedback encourage effective behaviour by letting the High I know, that his work will be highly recognized by his colleagues and others in the industry. If providing positive feedback to a High C, you would tell them that their work is helping to raise the Quality Standards in the company.

3) Avoiding Common mistakes in your Team

A typical staff meeting may go something like this "Hi Staff, it is important for me that we finish all of our projects on time this quarter" This message will be received differently by each individual due to their unique personality types. The High D will tell herself: sure, that's the way it should be. The High I may hear the words but soon forget the message.

To be effective it's better to address the weaknesses of your team members individually in your one-on-ones. For example in the O3 with the High I "Hi Daniel, this project is important for the reputation of the company and will influence how people will judge your work here. To make sure, we are on the right on track I would like you to send me a detailed project plan and update me weekly on how we are progressing". This is a mix of my second and third recommendations ;-)

4) An enjoyable work environment

DISC will help you identify individual topics that are important to your team members. Talking to a High S about upcoming changes in the company and how everything will become better won't get them excited or make them feel better about the future. To the contrary a High S. will most likely worry about the details and not the big picture for example, how big is the new office, will there be a window, and what will parking be like? The changes may not even be that big, but as a High I you embrace changes and see them coming a lot.

So, keep in mind what your team fears and what they enjoy talking about. So to address a change in the company to a High S, emphasize "how" things will change to make things better for "the whole team". This will encourage the High S and he will be less likely to hinder your plans for the changes.

As you see, DISC can provide great value, so I highly recommend downloading the Cheat Sheet and using it until you are comfortable and communicating more effectively with your team.

PS: Getting to know Geraldine, Rand and Casey at the mozcation in Lima was awesome, thanks for coming to South America. I really hope you enjoyed mozcation as much as Yngrid and I did.

Hi akiwitz.. thanks for giving us brief info about making and handling a perfect work team... actually this type of work team is applicable for any kind of work whether it's related to internet marketing or just an office work involving write and type.

well , the DISC system is much helpful for me , for some reasons

I am not much experienced in managing any team, that's how I definitely need this kind of evaluation cheat sheet to manage my assosiates!!!

Thatnks for the excellent post regarding a real and general issue in any workforce and for DISCcheat sheet also! Lots of thumbs up to you!

the disc model is great in theory but i see a few issues... it seems to be highly individualized. its great to motivate people on an individual level but how do i motivate them to work well as a team? next, if i give people incentives that are different (based on whats important to them) what happens when they start to think that the rewards are unequal?

Hi Andre, thanks for the post. I've actually taken the DISC assessment a couple times and I'm a strong DI which is probably perfect for my role as Moz's Community Manager. :) Additionally I've found that a team that is well versed across the spectrum will do much better in the end. Believe me you don't want a bunch of "me" trying to run the show all the time. ;)

we have used DISC extensively as part of lour team -development. We use DISC as a way of helping team mebers become more informed about each other's persnality - our experience is that DISC accelerates the speed at which a team 'clicks' . We have a certified professional comment on online test results this gives us more information about how to interpret the data. Team members are expected to review their own results and also those reports of anyone with whom they work with. We use the DISC to also inform us about which external contractor may best be suited to join the team on a permanent basis - this has been very effective in reducing the number of 'poor fits' we experience.